They had tossed him into the back of the van and driven him here. There had been no windows in that part of the vehicle. He estimated that they had been travelling for fifteen minutes, so he was sure that they were still in Medellín. The sounds outside the vehicle had given him no clue as to which part of the city they had taken him to, but the final part of the journey had been uphill. The road had climbed quite steeply for some time, with a number of sharp switchbacks to the right and left. Milton didn’t know the geography of the city as well as he would have liked, but he knew that some of the rougher neighbourhoods were found on the flanks of the hills that reached up from the river. He suspected that the cartel would have a redoubt in an area like that, where its members could melt away into familiar crowds and where the locals would be either sympathetic to its cause or terrified of the consequences of opposing them.

The van had stopped and the roller door had been thrown up. The big Scandinavian had dragged Milton outside and, before he had been muscled into the building, Milton had been rewarded with a glimpse that had confirmed his suspicions. He was in a neighbourhood of cheap housing that had been built on the side of a hill. He had been able to look down over the roofs of the buildings further down the slope to the open space of a river, a demarcation point between the neighbourhoods on opposite banks.

He got up and shuffled forward, feeling his way carefully in the darkness until his outstretched hands touched a wall. He ran his palms along the damp concrete, stepping gingerly sideways until he found a door. He put his ear to it and listened, straining for anything that he could use to give him a better idea of what might happen to him. He could hear muffled laughter and the sound of a television, but nothing else. He rested his shoulder on the door and leaned his weight against it. The door creaked a little, but there was no give. There was no easy way out, not that it would have mattered in any event. What was he going to do with his hands tied, stuck deep in an area he didn’t know, surrounded by people who were loyal to El Centro either through money or fear?

He had no card to play, other than to wait and hope that Hicks and the others might be able to get to him.